THE SPARROW
Passer domesticus
Top of head a bluish-grey, margined with deep chestnut band over the eye and ear-coverts; black chin and collar; a white spot behind the eye; under-parts a silvery grey; wing chestnut with black spots, with a white bar across it; tail-feathers brown with lighter edges; eyes hazel; legs and beak pale brown. Entire length, 5·5 inches.
MR. M. J. NICOLL thinks that the Egyptian Sparrow is a separate local variety, being always lighter and brighter coloured on the back. Sparrows here, as elsewhere, distinctly follow man. Where no men are, you will find no Sparrows. Get only half a mile into the sandy plain that fringes the cultivation and you will look in vain, or go up the steep hills, and you may walk for miles and miles and never see one. But if you come across some of the old-time caravan roads, or a place where there has been an encampment, then, however wild the surroundings and otherwise far away from civilized life, you will very likely find a Sparrow or two looking after some of the droppings from the nose-bags.
In winter they get spread about and are not very noticeable, but when the corn ripens then they all seem to multiply in extraordinary fashion. Clouds of them rise up and fly round, startled by the loud cry or stone slung by the ragged urchin of a bird scarer. I remember well Leighton’s picture of a bird scarer, showing an athletic young fellow, stripped to the waist, poised on one foot, body bent back, hurling the stone as David did at Goliath. But in the years I have known Egypt I have never seen in real life anything approaching that picture, for it is generally a blear-eyed small boy, half-clothed and hideously dirty, who, standing on the pathway, yells discordantly and purposely just as you pass him, sometimes accompanying the cry with a mild little jerky underhand throw of some clot of hardened soil which possibly breaks in mid-air before reaching the birds. So no lives are lost, and the birds just fly away contemptuously to another part of the field. In Nubia it is different, and there girls as well as boys do really sling stones, and with some effect. I do not think there is any peculiarity of the life-history of the Sparrow in Egypt that is
not equally noticeable wherever it is met with, but whereas at home it becomes almost a pest from its numbers, here it is not so noticeable, and its jaunty, sprightly air and carriage are often in agreeable contrast to the depressing squalor and monochrome, dismal surroundings. So here it gets blessings and not cursings poured on its head, and no one calls it “Avian Rat,” or any other rude name. I have pictured it as I often saw it, playing in and out of the decorated temple walls, in a cleft of which possibly it was born, and the pictures of which it can honestly say it has been familiar with from earliest childhood. One cannot help but speculating, does the Sparrow recognize in the painting its arch-enemy, for the pictured Hawk shown may well, as far as form is concerned, be meant for a Sparrow Hawk; which Hawk, true to its name, takes daily toll of all small birds and of Sparrows in particular. I remember well one day at the Ramaseum where I was painting—the quick passing shadow and the instant silencing of the cheery chattering of a host of Sparrows that were all sitting on a small bush just near me, and looking up, I saw a Sparrow Hawk dash away with a Sparrow in its talons, whilst the others were flying precipitately away in all directions. The Sparrow is an omnivorous feeder here, in Egypt, as it is at home, where nothing that grows comes amiss to it, not even the early crocuses of our gardens.